


Ties

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 02, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harlan women keep their secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellia/gifts).



Mags combs out Loretta’s hair every night before bed.

It’s long, but it’s bone straight, so it don’t really tangle, but Mags combs it anyway. And they sit and they talk about things Mags thinks she wants to talk about.

“You got a boy you’re sweet on?” she asks.

Loretta can’t shake her head too hard, so she says to the mirror, “No ma’am.”

She don’t say none are worth her attention. 

“Too busy with your girlfriends?” Mags asks.

Loretta doesn’t have girlfriends so much as one friend who is a girl. Kady, whose house she went to after Jimmy Earl Dean stuffed her in that truck. Kady, who’s been real busy lately with marching band and homework, stuff Loretta doesn’t have time for now that her daddy needs her to tend the crop, or he did anyway.

Kady, who still smiles at her and waves in the halls at school, even though Loretta feels too weird about what happened to maybe ever talk to her again.

“You didn’t let that man touch you, did you, Retty?” Kady asked her, real soft.

Loretta had shaken her head. “No,” she said. No.

“I don’ think I ever want a man to touch me,” Kady said under the covers.

Kady had her hair cropped short and people used to think she was a boy all the time, but last summer she got all these curves like a woman. When she wouldn’t let the boys touch her curves, they all started calling her dyke behind her back.

Loretta knew what it meant, that word, but she didn’t care. She and Kady were friends since Kindergarten when they held hands on the bus.

That night, under the covers, Kady put her hand on Loretta’s hip and Loretta didn’t push it away. She could have, but she didn’t want to. She cried into Kady’s shoulder and when she was done Kady kissed her tears away like Mama used to do.

“No one’s gonna touch you but me,” Kady said and Loretta liked the sound of that.

Then Dickie Bennett showed up at Kady’s door and said Loretta’s daddy had to go away, said she was to stay with Mags for a while. Loretta got her stuff and went with him and she and Kady never got to talk about any of that. 

Loretta doesn’t know what she wants to say anyway. 

She shrugs at Mags’ question. People only talk to her these days because they know she sells Mags’ shit.

“Honey,” Mags says, “I want you to be able to confide in me. People like us, we got to have confidants, people we can trust.

Loretta doesn’t think she can trust Kady with all this Bennett stuff. That’s another reason--instead of the chickenshit one--that Loretta’s stayed away from her. 

“Who do you trust?” Loretta asks.

Mags smiles. “Well, now, I trust my tads. Doyle especially, but Dickie and Coover too, from time to time. Before he died, I trusted my man, Pervis and--” She sets down the brush on Loretta’s bed. “I think that’s enough strokes for tonight,” Mags says softly.

“All right,” Loretta agrees, wide eyed, but closed mouthed.

 

Mags takes a jar of ‘shine with her out onto the porch. She’s made sure Loretta’s light has gone out before she pulls out her pipe and packs it real careful, real slow. She lights it with a hefty puff and keeps it burning with a long pull.

It’s spring in the mountains, too cold still to stay out without a jacket, but her mind goes to the summer time. It goes far back to one balmy night when she was watching the ‘stills until late, little Doyle sleeping at her feet in a nest of blankets, little Dickie not bigger than an egg in her belly, and Coover nothing but a wink her in her eye.

Mags didn’t look up when she heard the truck park in her drive, or when she heard the girl’s shoeless feet pad ‘round to her side of the house. “You watch where you step, Helen-girl,” Mags had said, eyes on the ‘still. “There’s broken glass all up and down this ground.”

“I know,” Helen said, mumbling for the cigarette hanging from her lips.

Mags looked up to see her bend low near the fire, almost catching her long curls, to pick up one of the sacks of weed Pervis had left lying around. She was wearing an old baseball jersey, maybe her daddy’s from the old mine workers league, and a pair of red polyester track shorts that didn’t come down anywhere near her knees.

Mags watched her peel open the cigarette, toss half the tobacco in the dirt and roll in Pervis’ bud just like it was her own shit. She stuck a stick in the fire and lit the spliff with the glowing ember. She took three long hits off it before she smiled at Mags.

“What’s on yer mind, Helen-girl?” Mags hadn’t seen Helen up here for months. 

Ever since Frances’ wedding to Arlo Givens, Helen had said she was gonna stay away, said it was best for everybody. Mags would never say, but Helen knew she shed tears that night. Still, she had shaken her head. “No one would understand,” her girl had told her.

Helen licked her lips, grazed her teeth over the lower one. She did that when she wasn’t sure. She was flopped over on one of Pervis’ lawn chairs, back against one arm, knees thrown over the other, legs--her smooth, tanned legs--dangling towards the ground. The spliff in her hand was half-smoked and she was already pretty high.

“Frances had her baby today,” Helen said, voice rough.

“Did she, now?” Mags said.

Helen nodded and smiled, like she was about to laugh, but couldn’t. “Named him Raylan. Raylan Givens.”

“Well that’s a damn stupid name, I ever heard one,” Mags grumbled and Helen finally did laugh.

She ran her fingers, with the spliff still caught between them, across her brow. “You know,” she said, smiling now like she wasn’t sure it was funny anymore, but there wasn’t anything else she could do, “I didn’t believe you, Maggie, when you said holding him changed things for you.” She was looking down at Doyle, fast asleep. “I thought... I don’t know. I didn’t believe you.”

Mags looked at Helen hard. “That boy ain’t yours, Helen.”

There was a sadness in her eyes that Mags didn’t want to see and an edge to her voice that Mags knew she meant every word. “No one’s gonna love him like I will, Maggie. Arlo sure as hell won’t and Frances fuckin’ can’t, not with Arlo around. That boy’s gonna need me.”

They stare at each other for a few long moments and Mags makes herself say the words. “You think I don’t need you, baby?”

“ _Don’t_ , Mags. Jesus,” Helen sniffed, hiding her eyes with her hair. She took one last hit and ground the roach into the dirt. 

Mags stepped away from the still, over Doyle and around the fire. She put her hands on Helen’s arms, ran her palms up their smooth softness. She didn’t apologize again for marrying a Bennett. She never asked for that baby, never wanted his cock, but she’d got it and she’d made her choice, with Helen’s bitter blessing. 

Helen leaned into Mags, pressed her face into Mags’ shoulder and choked on ragged breaths, joy and grief in equal measure.

“These ties are strong, honey,” Helen whispered in her ear, “but they ain’t thicker than blood.”

They spent that night together, out under the stars, and not another one since.


End file.
